Three-year-old June Software, which operates under the brand name TapToLearn, and oneyear-old Plivo are among the three Indian start-ups handpicked by the incubator, which is regarded as one of the world's foremost mentors for technology start-ups.

To be picked by Y Combinator means an almost certain path to success for young companies. Set up in 2005, it has backed over 460 start-ups, including Dropbox, Scribd and Airbnb, a hospitality services company.

TapToLearn, which develops educational applications for touch-screen devices, passed out of the programme earlier this year while Plivo, a cloud telephony venture, is part of the current session.

Last year, Interview Street—a Bangalore-based startup that helps simplify entry level recruitment for large corporations, including Facebook and Microsoft —became the first Indian company to make it to the rigorous three-month programme.

The chosen ones get an average seed funding of $20,000—for which they cede 2% to 10% stake — and intense mentoring from some of the world's leading technology investors. They also get access to a network of mentors, investors and peers in the Valley and beyond.

Start-ups at Y Combinator also receive $150,000 in the form of convertible debt from Ron Conway, Andreessen Horowitz and Silicon Valley investor Yuri Milner, whose fund DST Global has invested in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. This is transferred to equity when the start-up raises first round of formal capital.

TapToLearn has also received undisclosed funding from noted angels such as Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel, hedge fund manager Jim Pallotta and early stage ventures like Shasta Ventures, ENIAC Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The start-up also received funding from the founders of gaming venture BackFlip Studios.

"The number of users has grown enormously post our incubation, from 150,000 users earlier to over 1.5 million currently," says Roby John, who cofounded TapToLearn with Avinash Pandey and Sreejit J. TapToLearn, which has an advertisement led revenue model, got picked for an onstage interaction with Y Combinator at a US-based technology event and subsequently got into the incubation programme.

Earlier this year, Interview Street was chosen by the Obama administration to work on a technology project related to the Equal Pay initiative championed by the President.

"Technology products from India have arrived on the global market place," says S Sadagopan, Director, IIIT- Bangalore. "Cloud and internet are great levellers and startups are able to make use of these to acquire customers anywhere in the world."

"In the Valley, investors look at startups that are looking global," says Sameer Guglani, co-founder of The Morpheus, an Indiabased incubator that is modelled on Y Combinator.

"But most investors in India fund companies that are solely focused on the Indian market and that is quite limiting." Plivo's co-founder Venkatesh B also received assistance from Y Combinator to reach out to large clients.

"We applied for Y Combinator to get their feedback on the product we had built and never thought we would get accepted," says Venkatesh, who has worked in the Indian telecom sector for around seven years.

Plivo has around 12 clients who have built applications ranging from cloud-based video conferencing to remote call centres on the start-up's platform. "We have been profitable right from the start," says Venkatesh. TapTo-Learn's John says the start-up will be profitable this year. "We are targeting $1 million in revenue next year."